Saturday, September 24, 2011

Ten years ago, Emma Malloy fled Dublin for Boston, running for her life. Her emotional wounds have finally faded, and her life is now full of purpose and free from the pain of her past. But when she falls for her friend Charity's handsome and charming brother, Sean O'Connor, fear and shame threaten to destroy her. Could Sean and Emma ever have a future together? Or is Emma doomed to live out the rest of her life denying the only true love she's ever known?

Filled with intense passion and longing, deception and revelation, A Heart Revealed will hold you in its grip until the very last page.

My Review:

If there were ever an author I absolutely adored, it would be Julie Lessman. She has created an entire cast of characters whom I’ve come to love and feel as tho they’re family!

My first introduction to Julie’s newest release was when she shared a snippet from Chapter 17 in her newsletter. Oh my word. With just a couple of pages read I knew that I was ready to read Emma and Sean’s story!

Reading A Heart Revealed was a pull on my emotions. One minute my heart is being wrenched for what they’re going through, the next I’m laughing at their interactions.

Julie takes on quite the tough topic of abuse. Emma has experience the abuse from a man she believed she loved. Throughout this story we see the ramifications of what that has done to her: emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

Not only are we sharing Emma’s life in this story, Julie manages to keep us entwined in the lives of Charity, Faith and Katie. And of course along with the ladies come their husbands who always seem to be playing keep up with their wives in this book!

There’s a twist towards the end of the book that really grabbed my attention and it will grab yours as well. Julie doesn’t mince words and when she tackles a topic, she does so straightforward, but with tactful fashion.

If you have ever wanted to love characters and be drawn into the story of their lives, you will get a heaping dose full with A Heart Revealed.

About the Author:

Julie Lessman is the popular author of A Passion Most Pure, A Passion Redeemed, andA Passion Denied, as well as A Hope Undaunted, which was one of 2010's Booklist Top Ten Inspirational Fiction winners. Lessman has garnered several writing awards, including ten Romance Writers of America awards. She lives in Missouri.

Available September 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

I received this book in exchange for a review. The opinions expressed are my own and never influenced by the company.

I like this review, and I just wanted to add that if you've never read any of Julie Lessman's other books - YOU NEED TO!!! She is HANDS DOWN my favorite author, and she once again has written a book chock full of love, humor, passion, and story, story, story!!

This is the 5th book sharing the lives of the very Irish O'Connor family (The Daughters of Boston series is the 1st three, and the Winds of Change series continues where the Daughters of Boston left off), and I just absolutely LOVE how Julie incorporates SO MUCH the lives of the characters we have grown to love from her previous books! So by the time you get to this book - A Heart Revealed - you already know and LOVE Sean and Emma before even starting the book!

This one is a bit different than all of Julie's other books - because Emma is married, there isn't the heated romantic passion right off the bat and then all throughout the book (which is kinda Julie's "thing" in all of her other books.) Sean and Emma's story shows their love blooming through friendship, but don't worry - she still gives us plenty of her trademark passion and drama through Luke and Katie and Mitch and Charity!! And don't worry - things will definitely heat up for Sean and Emma too, so don't lose heart!! :-)

The book is also full of the regular "Julie Lessman" roller coaster-like ups and downs and then of course back up again...with of course a surprise or two thrown in!! I promise - this one will be one for the KEEPER shelf - along with ALL of her other ones!! A definite must read!